Thanks for pointing this out, Peter:
A particulary scary passage is from Section 2.3.3:
Human publishers of RDF content commit themselves to the
mechanically-inferred social obligations. The machines doing the
inferences aren't expected to know about all these social conventions
and obligations.
The social conventions used to interpret a graph may include assumed
truths, for which no logical derivation is available, and socially
accepted consequences whose rules of deduction are embedded in arbitrary
decision-making processes.
Semantic web vocabulary gains currency through use, so also do semantic
web deductions have force through social acceptance. Semantic web
deduction operates in a combination of logical and social (non-logical)
dimensions.
They seem to be saying they don't want RDF to be used by agents, because
agents cannot possibly know these socially accepted consequences and
thus cannot make any rational decisions on the behalf of users. If this
is the W3C's vision of the Semantic Web then we may as well just shut
down the WG and go home, cause it is doomed to failure.
Jeff
"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >ii. When a document does not contain an explicit imports statement,
> >but does reference a second document, then we had consensus that it
> >need not be determined (by us) whether all, some, or none of the
> >triples from the second document should be treated as if they were in
> >this document - the policy is left to the implementor (we might
> >suggest a possible policy in one of our documents). Thus, if one
> >document states that Socrates is a man, and it refers to a document
> >which states that Men are mortal, then the consensus is that it is a
> >matter of policy left to implementors to decide whether to believe
> >that Socrates is mortal
> >
>
> I believe that the RDF concepts document now contains wording that
> impacts on this.
>
> I find the view espoused in that document to be repugnant, and, worse,
> to adversely affect the use of the Semantic Web by organizations.
> WebOnt might want to officially comment on the document.
>
> Peter F. Patel-Schneider
> Bell Labs Research